Wainwright enchants, Gauthier troupe dazzles at Saint-Sauveur arts fest

Festival des Arts de Saint-Sauveur (FASS)

Grand Chapiteau Big Top

Saint-Sauveur, Que.

Saint-Sauveur is a Laurentian resort town an hour north of Montreal. It is also the home of an international arts festival that has been going strong since 1992. The mandate of Festival des Arts de Saint-Sauveur (FASS) is to showcase a lot of dance and some music, which leads to an eclectic programming mix.

Take, for example, the presentations of the first half of FASS. The kick-off artist was acclaimed singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright. He was followed by Gauthier Dance/Dance Company Theaterhaus Stuttgart, a shared evening between Tentacle Tribe and BJM – Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal, and superstar conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin leading his Orchestre Métropolitain. It doesn't get more varied than this.

The 2015 FASS was important because it is the first season programmed by new artistic director Guillaume Côté, aided and abetted by his associate AD, Etienne Lavigne. Both men are members of the National Ballet of Canada where Côté is a principal dancer and Lavigne is a principal character dancer. Judging by this season, their artistic choices are clear. They want to program high-quality, accessible events.

This was Wainwight's first appearance at FASS, which is surprising because he considers himself a local boy. His late mother Kate, one-half of the much loved McGarrigle Sisters singing-songwriting duo (with her sister Anna), grew up in Saint-Sauveur. In fact, the family still maintains its home in the village. On the opening day of the festival, the outdoor stage in the park, where FASS hosts its freebie events, was named La Scène McGarrigle in honour of the famous sisters.

Wainwright's concert was billed as an intimate evening with special guests, and he didn't disappoint. The first part had the singer performing his own repertoire. The second half was shared with members of the extended McGarrigle clan which included sister Martha, aunts Anna and Jane, Anna's children Lily and Sylvan Lanken (of the folk duo Mittenstrings), and Jane's grandchildren Gabrielle and Islay McMillan, 11 and seven years old, respectively.

The greatest impression of the Wainwright evening was his rich, beautiful voice, profound lyrics and complex musical arrangements for the piano. He sang full-throated at the top and bottom of his register, never pulling back into falsetto. Every song had its own mood. It was a generous program and, needless to say, the sold-out house was in rapture.

The big-ticket international item was Gauthier Dance, the resident company at Stuttgart's Theaterhaus, a centre for contemporary arts in that German city. For dancer-choreographer Éric Gauthier, this concert was a homecoming. He was born in Montreal, trained at the National Ballet School in Toronto and spent 10 years as a star of Stuttgart Ballet, before founding his own company in 2007.

Gauthier's troupe performs contemporary ballet and his dancers are phenomenal. The program consisted of a staggering nine works by today's break-out choreographers that included Alejandro Cerrudo, Alexander Ekman, Itzik Galili, Cayetano Soto, Po-Cheng Tsai, Marco Goecke and Gauthier himself. The one nod to classic contemporary ballet was Hans van Manen's Black Cake, choreographed in 1989.

Admittedly, the bulk of the program was on the light side, but what saved the concert itself from being light-weight was the wit of the pieces supported by sophisticated choreography. The fabulous dancers proved that they could perform anything that choreographers threw at them. Gauthier did include Johan Inger's Now and Now, about a failed romance to show that his dancers could do serious, but the evening over all could be categorized as very entertaining.

BJM performs often at FASS where it is a big draw, so it was surprising to see the company sharing a program. BJM performed three works by Soto, Benjamin Millepied and Vancouver's Wen Wei Wang that made the dancers look very good. In fact, BJM seems to be in strong shape, both in challenging choreography and talented movers.

Tentacle Tribe is regarded by many to be the new hot company from Montreal. The artistic directors are Swedish-born Elon Hoglund and Ottawa-born Emmanuelle Lê Phan, who have developed a choreographic language that blends hip-hop moves with contemporary dance, gymnastics and circus. (Apparently the couple met when they were both at Cirque du Soleil.)

Their piece, Nobody Likes a Pixelated Squid, was an excerpt from a longer work. They certainly moved beautifully, making seamless transitions between hip-hop standards, such as head and shoulder stands, and straight dancing, and their dramatic pauses did attempt to show the enigmatic relationship between a man and a woman, but, quite frankly, the jury is sill out on their impact. This short 20-minute section did not reveal anything that was radically new or different.

It was quite a sight to see the 60 members of Orchestre Métropolitain filling the stage in a tent, of all places. The concert was perfect for a summer's day – in other words, nothing too taxing. The program included Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Overture-Fantasy and Dvorak's Symphony No. 9 (The New World). What the concert showed was a conductor who can reach into the heart of the music and expose its riches. Nézet-Séguin is considered a great conductor for a reason.

FASS continues until Aug. 8 with Stars of American Ballet and International Ballet: A Night with the Stars.